EA confirms Danger Close team disbanded

EA has confirmed that team team at Medal of Honor developer Danger Close has been disbanded.

Speaking to Eurogamer, EA labels boss Patrick Soderlund said after putting the Medal of Honor IP on hiatus, the studio had effectively closed.

Many employees have since either left the company, move to DICE Sweden or into other parts of EA.

Last month EA opened an LA branch of Battlefield developer DICE, which appeared to effectively replace Danger Close in the area.

EA had previously declined to comment on whether Danger Close had been shut down.

"Danger Close as it was doesn't exist anymore," said Soderlund.

"There are people who left LA, people who work with DICE LA, and there are some who work in other parts of EA, as always when something gets dismantled."

DICE LA is expected to house up to 60 staff by the end of the year, with former Danger Close employees also joining the developer. The studio is expected to help work on titles also in development at DICE Sweden, which includes Battlefield 4 as well newly announced games Mirror’s Edge 2 and Star Wars: Battlefront.

Soderlund said that opening a new office in LA under the DICE brand meant the company could snap up development talent that may otherwise have been out of its reach.

"In Sweden we are floors eight, nine and ten. They are the eleventh floor, just in LA," said Soderlund.

"Frankly, it's about talent. Where can we find the right talent and people we think have critical skills we need? When you're in Sweden, Stockholm is a gigantic gaming city with DICE and Mojang and all the other companies, but we realised we needed to extend our reach if we wanted to get to the breadth of talent we wanted.

"We also thought we could export some of the good things about DICE into here. Since the DICE LA announcement we had a lot of pressure on that studio from people who want to come work there. And after E3, as you can probably imagine, there will be more."